FAKE REVIEWS ARE OK AS LONG AS YOU ARE SELLING
A number of products in our category are plagued with OBVIOUS fake reviews.
Take FFJ TV Backlight for example. Just a few days ago, ASIN B0DPHQRDN5 had 1.1k reviews. Today? It’s down by 400+. See screenshots below.
APRIL 23rd - 4.4 stars (1k reviews)
May 10th - 4.2 stars (862 reviews)
400+ reviews purged in one go. A red flag if I've ever seen one. But as a customer, you would never notice. Fake it till you make it baby!
This product has been plagued with obviously fake reviews. 3–4 paragraph reviews that parrot the listings bullet points nearly word-for-word. Clear manipulation. Eventually, Amazon caught on… kind of. They removed the reviews, but let the sales keep rolling.
Amazon’s so-called “Zero-Tolerance Policy” on fake reviews only applies if your product isn’t selling.
But when fake reviews work, Amazon isnt willing to do what's right for the customers and honest sellers and eliminate cheating sellers.
I think it’s time Amazon rebrands their ZERO TOLERANCE POLICY to what it actually is: “Zero Tolerance… unless you’re profitable."
The bigger problem? This isn’t an isolated case. It’s becoming a playbook: Launch. Fake reviews. Climb ranks. Get a warning. Keep the momentum. Win the category. Repeat.
If this is the winning strategy, can the rest of us join in? Or are we just suckers for trying to play by the rules?
Because right now, it looks like the only thing Amazon punishes… is not converting.
FAKE REVIEWS ARE OK AS LONG AS YOU ARE SELLING
A number of products in our category are plagued with OBVIOUS fake reviews.
Take FFJ TV Backlight for example. Just a few days ago, ASIN B0DPHQRDN5 had 1.1k reviews. Today? It’s down by 400+. See screenshots below.
APRIL 23rd - 4.4 stars (1k reviews)
May 10th - 4.2 stars (862 reviews)
400+ reviews purged in one go. A red flag if I've ever seen one. But as a customer, you would never notice. Fake it till you make it baby!
This product has been plagued with obviously fake reviews. 3–4 paragraph reviews that parrot the listings bullet points nearly word-for-word. Clear manipulation. Eventually, Amazon caught on… kind of. They removed the reviews, but let the sales keep rolling.
Amazon’s so-called “Zero-Tolerance Policy” on fake reviews only applies if your product isn’t selling.
But when fake reviews work, Amazon isnt willing to do what's right for the customers and honest sellers and eliminate cheating sellers.
I think it’s time Amazon rebrands their ZERO TOLERANCE POLICY to what it actually is: “Zero Tolerance… unless you’re profitable."
The bigger problem? This isn’t an isolated case. It’s becoming a playbook: Launch. Fake reviews. Climb ranks. Get a warning. Keep the momentum. Win the category. Repeat.
If this is the winning strategy, can the rest of us join in? Or are we just suckers for trying to play by the rules?
Because right now, it looks like the only thing Amazon punishes… is not converting.
0 replies
Seller_4zBzdtgCyS9EI
Not just your category, No matter what I search for, as soon as I order it by reviews every single product has a ton of obviously fake reviews.....Amazon obviously has more pressing matters to attend then enforcing a law they can get away breaking.
Seller_ZW7Y6GNPVpZRK
@Joey_Amazonany thoughts on this? I also reported the fake review issue with the Amazon community email. Can you raise this up internally as well?
Seller_ZW7Y6GNPVpZRK
@Glenn_Amazon not sure if there's another resource I can share this with.
Seller_HRcJa1gdGHeov
AI is going to make this issue significantly worse; the reviews now are obviously fake, but a halfway decent AI program would make them almost impossible to detect.
Seller_ZW7Y6GNPVpZRK
Obviously not a fake review. Obviously this is a real customer paraphrasing all the bullet points the product has on its own listing.
Seller_ZW7Y6GNPVpZRK
Real and authentic review. So which one is it. Did the customer use the TV Backlight for their 55-65inch TV or their PC monitor? The world will never know.
Seller_kLq7pWyhB9Yg9
post.Amazon shall post review if the customer has bought the product from Amazon only. Fake reviews is against fair competition and also mislead the customer. Amazon may lose its credibility gradually if this practice continues
Seller_fm3xIZaclgCrK
It's Chinese competitors at the vendor level using their access to data sellers don't have to create fake reviews. This has been happening to us for 2 years and it lead us to discover Amazon suppressing our products and boosting the products of the Chinese products that Amazon has made vendor deals with to Ship directly from Chinese factories. Most Chinese factories are based in Shenzen China. This lead to Vendor's changing our product detail pages even though we are the brand, the manufacturer, and we ship and package everything. And we're made in the USA.
Instead of supporting products that are made, designed, and ship from the countries the seller is based in. Amazon has chosen to make vendor deals with their factories in China, so they can ship to all market places around the globe, and subsidize their shipping.
As an American company, if we sold a product to a Chinese company, how much would it cost us to ship the product to China. Amazon does not care about sellers any more.
Today, Amazon is Temu. And the do not care about companies that have copyrights, patents, and protecting intellectual property of brands, manufacturers, and sellers who are creating their original products. And their whole market place integrity is crumbling.
They've also added AI into the back end about 8 to 12 months ago, and it's not helping sellers. It's consolidating sales for the vendor's they've made factory direct deals with and suppressing sales of legitimate sellers who ship from within the marketplaces they sell.
Seller_LAhuiXJ4eMubd
You are 100% correct - these bad actors are either:
1) harvesting reviews. Look at all the 'my ASIN has been hijacked!' posts in the forums. This is how they harvest reviews - take over older ASINs with hundreds of reviews, but no brand registry or UPC, by changing the brand to theirs, and then merging the old unrelated product into their ASIN.
2) piggy backing. Adding a new product as a 'variant' of an old product that is completely unrelated to it. One of my competitors does this, has a two week old product with 3k reviews by calling it a 'variant' of and old ASIN that is completely unrelated.
And you're right, AMZN does not give a hoot - as long as that ASIN with 3k fake reviews is selling, then who cares? Amirite?
